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I am a critter relocator. I have been my entire life. In the morning, when I walk up the driveway, which is still wet from the sprinklers, there are invariably half-a-dozen red worms crawling on the cement. I want to ask them why they would leave perfectly green grass for this hard, raspy surface. Surely they make easier pickings for the early birds here than in the weaving of the St. Augustine runners. I ask them whether they know that within the hour, the California sun will dehydrate them so that they are nothing more than squiggles on the concrete. But they are silent. So I pick them up and toss them back on the grass, giving them a chance at survival.

My wife, no lover of crawling, climbing or slithering critters, tolerates my relocation program. When she spies daddy longlegs slowly exploring the interior house walls with their claymation-like motions, resembling creatures from a Tim Burton movie, she calls me. She would prefer that I smash them with tissue paper and flush them down the toilet. But she knows that I will not. So she leaves the room while I gently grasp one leg between forefinger and thumb and then cradle the spider in my palm, which I use to transport it out to the backyard.

When we lived in Florida, my early attempts at capturing and relocating chameleons caused my wife stress. At first, she was willing to join me in observing their paranoid color-shifting. She stood behind me, beyond the porch screen on which they stalked, as the leaping lizards alternated green and brown — depending on their location relative to their backgrounds. But she wanted them outside the screen.

I made my first attempt to catch one by grabbing its tail —which promptly broke, leaving the chameleon with a rear-end stub like that of a Doberman. Rather than dart to a safe hiding place, the chameleon leapt from the screen to my T-shirt, nearly causing my wife to faint. And truth be told, I startled, as well. I learned to pinch their midsections gently so that I could carry them out to the garden while they twisted around and clamped their jaws on my index finger. The sensation was that of being gummed. I once suggested my wife see what it felt like. Not a chance.

I wasn't home when my wife spotted the sand skink racing from place to place in the family room. I walked in from the garage as she swung a broom in a mighty arc, smacking the floor with a resounding thwack. "Show your slimy face again and you're mine," she growled. "Who's yours?" I asked. "Where have you been?" she said. "The cleaners. What's up?" "There's a giant, red, poisonous lizard in here. Kill it," she said. "Where?" I asked. "Behind the couch."

She handed me the broom. I looked behind and under the couch. I moved it. My wife screamed, "There's that thing!" Racing across the floor toward the bookcases went the beefy, ten-inch skink. "It's harmless," I said. "Kill it," she countered. "We can catch it and put it outside." "We?" she asked. "I need your help," I told her. "You scare it with the broom. I'll catch it."

We looked at each other. "Give me the broom," she said. She chased it from behind the bookcases. From my knees, I plunged for it. I missed. It hid under the couch again. She slid the broom handle after it. The skink darted out. I scurried across the floor on my hands and knees and dove, caught the tail, then lost it at the same time she swung the broom and smacked my backside.

"I assume that was for the skink," I said. "Of course," she answered with a smile. "I have an idea," I said. "Let's hope so." From the kitchen, I grabbed the lid from a 14-inch saucepan. "Where'd he go?" I asked. "Under the recliner." "OK, chase him out the front." She did. The skink broke into the open, feinted left, then cut right. From a standing position, I sprang forward, laying out like a free safety going for a game-saving tackle. I stretched for all I was worth, grasping the lid with both hands. My two hundred pounds thumped onto the carpet. I trapped the lizard. "Gotcha!"

I heard my wife laughing uncontrollably. I turned around to see her rocking backward and forward, howling with joy, her face reddening. My personal instant replay kicked in, and I saw the episode as she had. We laughed for a long time. Then my wife asked, "Now what? How do you get it out of here?" I grabbed a piece of cardboard, quickly slid it under the lid and captured the skink in between. I headed out the back door. "Take him back to the woods," I heard my wife say. I turned around and saw her grinning from ear to ear. "All the way back."

I did. I gave the skink another chance, just as I have done for all the other critters I have relocated. It's the same chance I want if I wander somewhere I shouldn't.

John Dreyer's essays, articles and poems have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Gray's Sporting Journal, Cincinnati Magazine and Springhill Review, among others. John lives in California.